"Tomorrow Will Be Better"

It has been almost three weeks since we finished our SOBO journey on March 10th. Honestly, sometimes it still feels like we just came home for a break, that any day now we're going to do our trail laundry and pack our backpacks and head back out. But we're not... it's over. I wish I had some epiphany to share, but I don't and that's okay. For now I'll just share my thoughts.

Our journey took us almost 8 months. We started at the Canadian border on July 18th of 2020. For a long time, until Tennessee actually, that first day on the International AT was the worst day on trail. Our friends Sparky and Maggie had just dropped us off at the border crossing. We had a sweltering road walk until we disappeared into the trees on what they call the "slash" which is a cleared path along the U.S./Canadian border.

Hiking along "the slash" on our 1st day of the IAT

We followed the slash for 7 or 8 miles and we were in really good spirits because we were back on trail. Then we came to a beaver bog that was impossible to bushwhack around without going at least a mile off trail. We sank to our knees and sometimes even our thighs in bog water, the muck sucking at our trail runners with every single step. We finally got through after a good hour or so of only 100 yards of trail.

The Beaver Bog of Day #1

Then evening came. We were still hiking because we hadn't found a good place to camp yet. On one side of us was Canada- which we weren't allowed to cross in to- and on the other side was private property that was heavily posted with 'No Trespassing' signs. With dusk came hoards of mosquitoes like I had never seen before. They were ruthless, within minutes any exposed skin was devoured. We tried jogging (uphill with a backpack on) which lasted maybe half a mile. We tried soaking ourselves in my picardin bug spray, but they would land directly in the oily puddles of it on my skin and feast anyway.

My legs a half hour after the skeeters came out

By dark we still hadn't found a place to camp and I couldn't take much more so we decided to bushwhack out of sight of the trail and onto the private property to set the tent up. We hastily threw up the Duplex and clamored inside, twenty mosquitoes slipping in before we could zip the doors. We spent the next few minutes squashing them, looking like madmen, slapping each other, the walls, and the ceiling until finally I laid back on the bare tent floor. The edges of my vision were black from the sheer swelling and number of bites. I laid out my sleeping pad, chewed on a piece of jerky and quickly called it a night. I remember just laying there thinking to myself "Tomorrow will be better... for sure".

Months later, in southern New Jersey. we woke to an extremely humid day. That afternoon I slipped and took the hardest fall of my life on a boulder, one leg bending underneath the full weight of my body and backpack and jolting my tailbone and lower back. I cried (of course) and Cobra helped me up but a few minutes later I was fine. Or I thought I was. Over the next few days I progressively got some of the worst sciatic and lower back pain that I had ever experienced in my life. I couldn't even sit in a chair without searing pain radiating down my leg, let alone backpack.

I tried everything. I went home to see my chiropractor, twice. I tried so many different stretches. I tried ibuprofen and pain patches. I tried a tens unit and heating pad. I turned into this grouchy, unbearable, pain filled human. I couldn't enjoy the trail. The rocks of Pennsylvania jolted my back even more and I would have to sit and take a break at least every mile. I thought for sure my hike was over. I'm sure I was driving Cobra crazy, I cried every single day. I felt sorry for myself. One day, when I was having a meltdown and sobbing under a bridge he said "maybe we should go home". The sheer thought of it made me want to scream. I thought 'no... there's no way. Tomorrow will be better, tomorrow I'm going to wake up and my pain will be gone'. And somehow a couple weeks later, one day in southern PA... it did. I had done a different set of stretches the night before and when we went out for a slackpack the next day, my pain was gone and never came back. Completely gone.

The day my pain disappeared in PA

We got to central Virginia sometime around Christmas, which was when the true winter weather began setting in on our hike. There were more days than I could count that I thought there was no possible way we could keep going. That there was zero chance of me making it to Springer. My worst day of the entire trail was in Tennessee, just north of Allen's Gap. Our friend Bunny had dropped us off after a weekend of slackpacking and cooking us amazing meals over a campfire. I saw a winter weather alert on my phone and thought nothing of it, because I'd been having one pop up every single day for weeks. When Bunny dropped us off it was snowing, as always. We hiked through it most of the day and I made the mistake of not eating enough snacks while we were moving. In normal weather this isn't a problem but when it's in the 20s and your clothes are sweaty, it is. My stomach was growling and in just a few minutes of stopping to rest at the shelter I was shivering uncontrollably.

Cobra had gone down to the spring to grab some water and because I was so cold, my hands wouldn't work to get into my backpack to grab my sleeping bag. So I jumped up and down in place (with a bad knee)- it was really a sad sight (LOL) until he got back. When he walked up and saw me, he dropped everything to pull all of our warm gear out of our backpacks and wrapped me up in it while I shoveled handfuls of trail mix into my mouth. We decided to spend the night there since we only had 12 miles to the next road where Cobra's uncle would be picking us up. We figured we'd wake up early and meet him there in the afternoon. The wind died down that night and the steady sound of snow blowing against the tent eventually died down too, so we assumed it had stopped.

The next morning we woke early and dressed in the tent and when I unzipped the door I laughed nervously. It had snowed all night. It was still snowing. Drifts were piled up outside the shelter and I couldn't even see the faintest hint of our tracks from the night before. After making it only about a quarter mile in the storm, Cobra and I huddled our heads close together in the howling wind to discuss turning around. With our limited food and not knowing how much longer it would snow and how much deeper the drifts would get, we decided to push on.

Unamused

We had only made it about 3 miles before I fell hard on a fallen tree with sharp branches and tore a hole through my rain pants, base layers, underwear, and skin. I cried for a few minutes but had to force myself to stop. The wind and snow was whipping hard from the west and my eyelashes froze together from my tears. I guess crying wasn't an option if I wanted to see. The toes on my left foot were completely numb for over seven hours.

Unamused #2

There was absolutely nowhere out of the wind we could have set the tent up to get warm. We made it 7 miles that day and it took from daylight to dark. We set the tent up in a shelter, defeated, knowing the road was only another 5 miles but that it would take us hours and hours to get there. I tried pulling my foot out of my boot but the sock had frozen to the inside of the sole. I began to panic as I tried to pull it out and thought it was my foot itself that had frozen to the boot. Thankfully, within a few hours in our sleeping bags most of the feeling had returned to my foot. Cobra and I didn't say much that night. We just took comfort in the fact that we were laying side by side and that we were warm. That night I thought to myself, 'The sun is going to come out tomorrow. I just know it will.' And guess what? It did.

My mildly frostbitten foot

My sock that had frozen to my boot after our worst day. I slept with it that night and it still never thawed.

I'm not sure if it was unwavering hope or stubbornness. Whatever it was, it was my insistence that it would get better and things couldn't possibly get worse, that kept me going in times like these. Of course there were so many incredibly good moments on this trip, I couldn't possibly count them. So many that they far outweighed every single one of the horrible ones. My worst days stand out to me though because they made me realize one thing. There is nothing, absolutely nothing in my lifetime that I cannot do. Even when I thought I couldn't take one more single step, I did. When my body feels like it couldn't possibly make it one more day, it will. And no matter what my situation is, tomorrow will be better. If it's not, maybe the next day will be.

In the moment, I thought these situations would break me. I thought they would crush my spirit and send me home. But now that I've made it through them I'm honestly thankful for them. (Which is hilarious to me because especially on our snow day I thought to myself 'If I ever, ever try to say this was a great Type 2 fun experience I am officially a psychopath and I want nothing to do with myself'). But damn... if I can make it through that, what can't I make it through?

The ridge we had crossed the day prior, view from Cobra's uncle's house